by Nicole Capps

I’m psyched.

It’s 4:30PM and I’ve just pulled into the parking lot at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Charlotte, NC. People are already piling in. Some are just sitting in their cars listening to music, others are setting up grills and having beers with their friends. Everyone is pumped up for a great rock show.

I’m here to interview Seether – not just as a journalist, but as a fan first and foremost. I’ve been following them since 2001.

The guys are very laid back and inviting. I start out by asking them what they’ve been up to and Shaun answered in his incredibly sexy accent, “Just working on my stamp collection and collecting fridge magnets!” Everybody laughs and the rest of the band jumps in and said they’ve been playing a lot of Halo 3. It took me a little while to picture these hardcore rockers from South Africa all sitting around playing video games, but I think it’s awesome that even though they’re on the road constantly for months on end that they find time just to be themselves.

Tell me about the new CD, Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces.

Dale: I think it’s an album we are all excited to see come out, just to see what happens. The first single has been received really well, so we hope you enjoy the rest of it as much as the single. We’re really proud of it, its a little bit more experimental than the stuff we’ve done in the past. It kinda moves in a bit of a new direction for us. That’s exciting. We’re all very excited. I think it’s one of our favorite albums we’ve done so far.

How long did it take you to write the new album?

Shaun: About a year. Somewhere in there. We had about 60 songs and we picked 12 for the album. We picked songs that weren’t as heavy as some of the other songs because we had written some really ‘metal’ songs and we didn’t feel this should be a metal album.

Dale: We wanted Karma and Effect to be heavier than Disclaimer and we wanted it to be more complex as far as like the music and stuff. This one has more creativity. It was tough picking the 12 songs that made it, though.

I’d say it was pretty hard to just pick 12 out of 60 songs.

Shaun: Yeah, it was really tough. That’s why I’m kinda glad that part of it is over. I still think back and think we should have put 15 songs on the album, done a double album or something. At least we saved some songs for a b-side or a collector’s CD or something.

How long were you in the studio?

Dale: About four or five weeks.

Shaun: It was pretty quick actually. The teams that they have were amazing. They have one team that just does the guitars and that goes to the guy that edits them and then it comes back to the vocal guy. It’s a constant rotating system and that’s why it works as fast as it does rather than the same two guys doing everything. It’s like this team does this and sends it to this guy and this team does that and sends it to that guy. That’s pretty much the process. That’s why the albums are quick and they sound as good as they do. Every guys knows what he does specifically. That part was great. I love the sound of this album, just the guitar sounds man. They have these two guitar nerds in the studio and these guys were amazing. You could say, “I’m thinking of a sound like this” and they would say “OK, cool man” and two minutes later they would come back with this amazing sound.

What is your songwriting process? Do you write as a band?

Dale: We sometimes do.

Shaun: Yeah, I think the final part is always the entire band.

John: It gets “Seetherized” a bit. I’m sure Shaun has completely different versions in mind and then me and Dale get to it and just totally fuck it up!

Shaun: No, I like what you guys are doing. I’m not a drummer, so I wouldn’t know. I don’t play bass very well. Dale comes in and add his own flavor which is really awesome.

What do you look for as far as inspiration for writing a song?

Shaun: It just depends. Sometimes you just feel like writing something mellow. Sometimes you feel like you want to write something heavy. Once you’ve written down an idea and come up with the melody, just the music itself with give you a feel or an emotion and you just go with that. When I’m coming up with melodies sometimes I will just mumble lyrics.

“Fake It” is doing really well and has taken off online and at MySpace. Tell me a little bit about that song. Who is the hypocrite you mention in the song?

Shaun: It’s not one particular person. I think it’s the people that buy into the idolatry of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan – that kind of teen pop idle crap. It doesn’t have any substance to it and you’ve got this whole generation of girls looking up to these girls. You watch these people and they’re trying to pretend they give a shit about anything except themselves. No they don’t. Look at Paris. She’s gonna buy a Hummer that runs on hydrogen – which they don’t even make – and then she’s gonna go start her little orphanage for kids. Come on dude, she doesn’t even know what an orphanage looks like! I don’t even think she knows what the word means. I live in L.A. I hate L.A. and I hate most of the people there. Maybe one in 10 people are cool. The rest of them are all, “look at what I’m gonna do,” and “look how expensive my Prada is.” Is that really what’s important? There was a girl that got in an accident and her face got all wrecked. She fell down some stairs while she was hammered and broke her jaw. She used to always get by on her looks and now she’s got none and shes freaking out. Shes got nothing. She’s stupid as fuck. On top of that, she just used to always get by because guys thought she was pretty. She would walk around and bat her eyelids and push up her tits and expect everyone to buy her whatever she wants and now she doesn’t have that anymore, so shes a loser. If she would have actually just took some time to develop her personality it might have been a different story. So it’s kind of poetic justice. I just think it’s an attack on people that buy into it. Do stuff that you want to do. You don’t have to have a boob job to be pretty. You don’t have to have your nose fixed. For example, that Dr. 90201 or whatever the hell it is – I’ve watched those guys, they’re such sleazebags. They try to show you that they’re helping everyone. It’s pathetic. There are 16 year olds getting boob jobs!

A lot of parents are giving their kids plastic surgery for graduations and birthdays.

Shaun: We have a friend who’s dad gave her boobs when she turned 18. That’s fuckin’ creepy man!

Yeah, it is!

Shaun: It’s like, “hey daughter would like like some bigger boobs?” (Shaun says in a high pitch voice) “Sure dad, totally!” After she gets them does he want to check them out to see what his money paid for? The song is just about insecure people that know that all they have is looks or material things and they know that is all they’ve got. Have you seen that new reality show? It’s called, ‘America’s Most Stupid Model’ or something. It’s these ten beautiful people but they’re all thick as pig shit and I’ve been waiting for something like this forever. I love that they’re making fun of them. We’ve become so materialistic and so image driven that this world isn’t a fun place to live in. Like all these high school shootings. They all say they’re caused by music and shit. Bullshit. Those kids have probably been beaten down their whole lives and they finally said “fuck you, I’m pissed off enough and I’m not gonna take it.” We’ve all been through high school. We all know how mean we were to each other back then.

There was a shooting at the high school I graduated from a couple years ago and the kid shot the principal and two vice principals.

Shaun: Yeah, and they probably said, “You must have been listening to Manson man. You must have been listening to Metallica.” But the parents or students were dicks to them probably. My brother quit playing rugby one time because the coach had him crying on the field, telling him he was a piece of shit. My brother was 10 years old. He never played rugby ever again because of one teacher. Can you imagine if that happens to kids over and over and over? Of course they’re going to freak out.

You’ve been on the road for the past couple of months. How does it feel to get out and play live again?

Shaun: It feels awesome. It’s like having a year long withdrawal from something and suddenly getting it back.

Dale: We’re really a touring band. We love playing live. We love being on the road. We just love every part of it. Some bands can’t deal with it. They don’t like the idea of living out of a suitcase. This is where we really kick ass. The studio thing is just sorta a preamble to get this shit down and get back on the road because Seether is really a live thing.

Shaun: Playing live is fun. Recording is “funn-ish” ’cause you get to hear the final work but the playing part is just the part that’s making the noise.

I’d say working in the studio can be really stressful.

Shaun: Yeah, with Karma and Effect and Disclaimer it sucked. I hated the studio. I never wanted to go back into the studio again.

Dale: Everybody has their input. You’ve got A&R, you’ve got labels and shit, and you’ve got producer input. It’s only on the stage where we’re in control. Those 75 minutes – that’s our thing. We can be us. No one has input. That’s us in the moment.

Shaun: And no one can tell you how to play your shows. They could give you pointers, but you don’t have to take them. Playing shows is like going back and being a kid. That’s what’s fun. Plus, it’s way better than an office job.

Your website is completely innovative and fan friendly. How important is what you offer your fans online?

Shaun: Everything is online. Interactivity is very important. If it’s fan created content you can put it on our site and it’s cool cause it’s like “SeetherSpace.” You have your own little profile and it’s a good way for fans to see each other and for us to see our fans. It was actually our labels idea and when I first saw the site I was blown away. Before we were kind of neglected. They were like, “Here’s a website. See ya, we’re working with Evanescence right now.” We were like, “Thanks guys.” This one is cool. I go back and every time I find something new that I didn’t know was there before. It’s great because as much time as people spend on Myspace, fans start meeting fans on our site. We’ve had fans meet each other and get married and that’s kind of cool.

I was on there a couple days ago and it’s like a little community, everybody is interacting and leaving comments and pictures. Its really cool.

Shaun: Yeah, and once again, kudos to the label man. Its a great idea. I’m blown away by it.

What are your plans after your finished with this tour?

Shaun: We’ll probably take two two weeks off in December around Christmas into January and then I would like to go to Australia.

Dale: Yeah, there is a series of festivals called Big Day Out over there every year at that time.

Shaun: Then maybe we could hit up Europe for a week or two, do some promo stuff, then come back to the states and do a headlining tour and then go back to Europe for the summer and do all the stuff we’ve never done. Hopefully this album will open that up a little.

Guys, thanks for taking time out for this interview today. What would you like to say to your fans?

Dale: We encourage people – especially kids – to be individuals. That’s where all great art comes from.

Shaun: How are you going to be creative if you’re following what everybody else is doing? There’s no creativity there. Even the artists that are coming out today suck! There are great artists, but all these artists are like super nerd kids that sit at home and do stuff on their computers. Music is no longer in schools. What happened? The bands are all just cloning each other.

John: Stay true to yourself.